


palimpsest

by cromarty



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22175125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/pseuds/cromarty
Summary: palimpsest(ˈpælɪmpsɛst)n.- A parchment or other writing material written upon twice, the original writing having been erased or rubbed out to make place for the second; a manuscript in which a later writing is written over an effaced earlier writing.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 33
Kudos: 135





	palimpsest

**Author's Note:**

> I said something and then Leslie encouraged me to write something. This wouldn’t exist without her.

There was a brief period, when he was eight or nine, that Patrick took a break from popping the collars on his polo shirts and unbuttoning them all the way and wearing his junior park ranger vest, at least when his cousins couldn’t see. A break from running around the backyard with a broom handle, a break from muttering “stay on target, stay on target” to himself while piloting his treehouse. 

For a month or so that summer, he borrowed his grandad’s old felt hat and spent a lot of time in the sandbox he had grown out of but that his baby cousin Brigid sometimes used, lying on his stomach, carefully shifting sand with a paintbrush. That month he thought a lot about treasure, and how careful, precise digging could sometimes yield it, but so could running around and punching some Nazis. 

He got the Eyewitness Archeology book from the library and pored over it until he wasn’t allowed to renew it anymore. 

“Let another kid take a turn, buddy,” his Dad said, and brought him over to the grown-up part of the library and left him in the 930s. It was there, sitting on the floor in the aisle while his dad browsed, occasionally pulling out the real glass magnifying glass his mom had let him borrow to really see the details, that Patrick learned the word “palimpsest.”

He thought about it, later, during each iteration of trying again with Rachel. Scraping off the parchment, erasing the obsolete text to recycle the perfectly good foundation. Starting anew, but not exactly with a clean slate. 

The ghostly imprints of their past fights and failures hovered in the air around him when he looked at her, every time. Everything he tried to wipe away lingered, faint traces of his worries that he didn’t know how to love her enough, that he wasn’t sure he could be what she needed. That he wasn’t sure what he needed.

He needed a fresh piece of parchment. In Schitt’s Creek, a town with a ridiculous name and an embarrassing sign, in a job that was ill-defined but pleasant enough, in a single room at the back of a friendly man’s house, he thought, _nothing looks like anything without a little careful digging and some brushing off the dirt._

What happens to a parchment if you write the same thing over and over? _I want more of you, David Rose._ Get a little nervous, erase. _I want more._ Get a little insecure, hike it out, erase. _I want more, I want dinner, I want to make you smile on your birthday, I’m not sure I can make more than that happen. _

Get kissed! Don’t erase. 

Erase “friend,” sort of, write “boyfriend” in its place. In the same place, almost, only half a mile down the road from where “business partner” turned into “date” turned into “first real kiss” turned into dropping him off the morning after. 

Erase “boyfriend” and write “the best” in its place. Erase “the best” to write “I’m a coward who always ruins things,” but luckily, quickly erase that and write “the best, even better” again. Erase that “best” for “David is my boyfriend and I’ve never been happier in my life.” 

Erase that for “fiancé.”

Maybe in that exact same place, next to the motel where so much happened, near the store where nearly everything else did, erase “fiancé” and write, unbelievably, “husband.” 

Stop erasing. 

Leave “husband,” indelible, forever, on this second parchment, marked with all the traces of things you thought you would never get to have. The treasure _was_ there to be discovered, after all.


End file.
